Originally published in 2014 and updated in 2018, and would appear appropriate for the time, but the industry is heading in a different direction and the SAE Levels of Automation are arguably no longer fit-for-purpose.

Following is a summary of why I believe SAE Levels of Automation need to be discarded and replaced. Each point has been discussed in length throughout the previous articles and referenced.

Lets get controversial...

The document is long, confusing, legalistic, acronym heavy and in need of basic formatting.[2]

The framework that it defines has many inherent caveats, that much of the document is spent clarifying. [2]

The need for simplicity has created a vacuum that has been filled with various iconography.[2]

The levels technically start at level 0 and go up to level 5. Are there 5 or 6 levels? [2]

The differences between level 3 and 4 are so subtle (like with shuttle buses and remote fall-back users) as to be entirely academic and add no value. [5]

The popular press has glossed over important points (because of either misunderstanding or brevity) and over simplifications have been perpetuated. [2,3,4]

The Operational Design Domain (ODD) is not understood by some drivers resulting in dangerous behaviours.[2]

A manufacturer with a long term and well-defined roadmap to autonomy and who are investing in their tech-stack are grouped in the same bucket as those without one.[3,4]

Some manufacturers are using shortcomings in the SAE definitions (ODD for example) to market their vehicles as being more advanced than they are.[3]

Vehicles with an advertised level of autonomy are not required to define their ODD and can use concepts as vague as “within system limits”.[3]

The document has artificially defined five flags that motivates some manufacturers to capture ‘the next flag’ without considering what is needed to capture the flag after that. These efforts may be counterproductive. [3,4]

The connectivity of vehicles will be in many ways as powerful as their autonomy but this is not acknowledged.[2]

Relatively simple but niche problems, like shuttle buses, are measured on the same scale as the really complex problems that will truly disrupt society. [4,5]

J3016 forces us to shoehorn 2019realities of vehicle autonomy into the concepts of 2014.

Conclusion

Through these articles, we have been investigating the SAE J3016, its obfuscated format and definitions that are causing confusion throughout the industry and popular press; how it has led to manufacturers making claims that are contrary to the SAE J3016 definitions. We have looked at the Operational Driving Domain (ODD) and how it can be so highly specific as to be useless and the OEDR whose definition means that it is largely ignored. Finally, J3016 lumps different types of platforms to together based on current functionality rather than its potential capabilities and road map.

J3016 was first proposed in 2014 and revised in 2018. In this world of automated vehicles, this is a generation old. J3016 has a purpose, but it has been misused and has been a victim of its own success. The world is moving in a direction different to what was envisioned in 2014.

Coming up

From here on in, we are going to review the driving automation industry, the trends, the technology and eventually propose a different labelling convention that is more in line with the industry. And we are soon going to detour via He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named… Elon Musk.